Remember the Rolling Jubilee? Where us rebellious/generous types who have a little bit of money (just a little) help to demolish our fellow Americans’ medical debts, at the bargain price of 20$ for $1? Wondering how it’s been progressing? I’d been hoping they’d figure out a way to hook up their great project with the nation’s upcoming pagan/Christian/capitalist/humanist Holiday seasons. And none too soon, over the fabled “transom,” comes the following:

Letters have been mailed to dozens of debtors.

Start planning for January 21st, a national day of debt organizing.

You have made the Rolling Jubilee a success of unimagined proportions.

It’s been just over one month since the People’s Bailout telethon. Can you believe it? Relive the magic by watching clips here.

Since that incredible night, we have been overwhelmed with scores of personal stories, hundreds of offers to help, thousands of emails and, of course, over ten thousand individual donations. These donations – averaging just over $40 apiece – now total nearly $500,000, or ten times our initial goal.

Every donation will be used to help relieve someone’s debt burden, while shining much-needed light on the predatory debt system.

We have already begun to purchase debt.

On Monday November 12, we purchased $100,145.74 of medical debt for $5,000. Documentation of this purchase is available on our blog. Thanks to donors like yourself, we are able to expose the vulture-like nature of debt collectors, and show just how little your debt is worth to the banks and lenders who sell it off in bundles at pennies on the dollar.

You can choose one of three illustrated cards to give the gift of debt liberation! Go to http://rollingjubilee.org/gifts/ and generate a personalized holiday card for printing or emailing. These cards are another way you can work to build a social movement against the predatory debt system. Together, we will keep the Jubilee rolling.

Next steps, and how you can help.

Strike Debt will host visioning session on debt on January 21st, MLK Day. There will be coordinated events in cities around the country. Keep your eyes on www.strikedebt.org, as well as Facebook and Twitter, for further announcements about this historic gathering.

Our primary focus over the next few months will be to deeply target the role of debt in our broken healthcare system. We will announce a substantial debt buy – made possible by your generosity – in concert with the release of in-depth report on medical debt that will follow the model of our report on the debt crisis emerging from Hurricane Sandy. The strike of the Rolling Jubilee and the public service document on the healthcare system, aims, like all Strike Debt actions, to educate, create paths for direct action and mutual aid. When we attack the current system, we build alternatives in its place.

Are you starting a local Strike Debt chapter? Great! We’d love to hear about it. We’re building a directory of chapters around the world. To get involved in the organizing, send a brief email to organize@strikedebt.org with your contact info, website, and anything else you would like to share with the Strike Debt organizing team.

Again, thank you for leading the way to a world where the debts we owe are to each other and not to the 1%.

About Admin

"Admin" is just editor Vern Nelson or associate editor Greg Diamond sharing something that they mostly didn't write themselves, but think you should see. Before 2010 "Admin" may have been former owner Art Pedroza.

Great accomplishment…people putting money to work. $500K is definitely something to be proud of. I have to imagine that those who have that burden taken off of their back are very grateful for what they have been given. The debt collection industry is ripe with questionable tactics